


Iscariot

by leporicide



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Shiro-centric, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 06:31:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7746781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leporicide/pseuds/leporicide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don’t worry,” slips out, and even he can tell how shallow it echoes in their small dead cell. Matt grasps on to it like the word of God, like Shiro is a holy man, like maybe Shiro can save them. For a moment, when Matt’s breathing steadies to a calm lull and he falls silent beside him, Shiro believes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iscariot

**Author's Note:**

> Takes a break: writes a small amount of gore. Might continue this until Shiro's escape.

“Shiro…?”

Matt’s voice is quiet, sweet against the backdrop of the cell, punctuated by his panting and the small  _ plop _ of droplets falling against the concrete floor. Shiro does not stir from his place, keeps his back still against the cold ground, the feeling of rocks digging into the tender skin. He barely opens his mouth to respond, eyes staring into the darkness. 

“Yeah.”

“I’m scared.”

It sounds so small, so very very small and maybe Shiro does shift a little, move closer to the other man so their shoulders are a breath apart. They do not touch and he can hear the unsteady intake of oxygen to his right, the panicked twitching of fingernails against the uneven ground.

Shiro wants to say  _ ‘me too’ _ but instead he tenses his muscles, closes his eyes and ignores the water that drips on his face from the shaky ceiling. It makes him shiver, shakes his bones into a hollow thunder. “Don’t worry,” slips out, and even he can tell how shallow it echoes in their small dead cell. Matt grasps on to it like the word of God, like Shiro is a holy man, like maybe Shiro can  _ save them _ . For a moment, when Matt’s breathing steadies to a calm lull and he falls silent beside him, Shiro believes it.

***

The Galra round them up like cattle.

The guards burst into Matt and Shiro’s shared block, unlocking the glass barrier. Shiro wakes to the slide of the door falling beneath them, scrambling up to defend himself. He’s immediately pushed down, disoriented from sleep. Strong hands shove his face against the ground, rubbing his flesh against the jagged rocks.

“Shiro!” Matt struggles out in the darkness but he can’t make out his figure, only the sounds of a body crumpling against the weight of something monstrous.

“Calm down!” He’s shouting, trying to minimize the damage. The guards are speaking to each other and it almost sounds like laughing but Shiro can’t understand. He grunts against the restraints placed on his hands, shoved tightly at his back. They pull him up like he’s nothing, just a pile of moldable meat.  He tastes blood on the corner of his lips, covered in grime.

The guards push him towards the exit of the cell, forcing him to keep his feet moving. Shiro feels wobbly, loose in his own skin. He thinks he hears Matt vomiting violently, a shudder of breathing and more laughter.  When he opens his mouth to call out, he gets interrupted blinding light, shocking tears. The colors burn his eyes, only just barely having gotten used to the darkness of his confines. He blinks away the flares, the violet flashes and steel cool black. It’s a corridor, Shiro realizes, a long stretch of a hallway, cells a replicate of his own tiled down the path. He turns his head, sees Matt getting dragged, unable to use his feet with how long they kept them down. He looks distant, lost and scared and there’s a blooming bruise under his left eye. Shiro hadn’t noticed he was hit, and for some reason that causes him deep shame.

A look to his left shows similar prisoners in his state, dressed uniformly in rags and strapped hands to their back. They’re being herded like animals until they reach the end of the hallway before being roughly pushed down another row of cells. Shiro nearly stops when he sees it, gets a blunt shove from behind that feels like a gun, solid and intimidating. The glass window they pass shows nearly the bulk of the vessel they’re in. Hundreds and hundreds of cells, prisoners being lined up, gunned down on their knees.

“Don’t look,” he hisses at Matt beside him, watches him immediately aim his head down to stare at his feet as they walk. Shiro feels sick, watching creatures he’s never seen before being dragged into a pile in the distance, a large mound of bodies, still warm and wet with blood. He thinks he might vomit soon too, staring at the tangle of limbs.

He snaps his eyes forward when one of the guards start speaking to him.  It’s gurgly, inhumane and Shiro realizes that they are so very far from home. The other prisoners seem to understand. They move restlessly, colliding against his shoulders and pushing Shiro with them as they enter a large room. It’s dimmer, the lights turned low, illuminating the guards with bright halos from their uniforms. They look angelic, eerily peaceful from the routine. Matt is shaking beside him, fingers twitching violently behind his back. Shiro panics that he might snap one.

“They’re going to make us fight,” he whispers, so shaky and cracked behind chapped lips. Shiro swallows the words like a pill, Matt always having the best intuition. 

“What?”

A guard is standing up in front of large metal doors, baring colorful dried streaks that, Shiro realizes with bile running up his throat, is blood. Not human blood but the smell was undoubtedly the same, of urine and sick. There’s a roar behind the door, large shouts and it sounds  _ excited _ , calling for something nearly familiar to him.

The first row of prisoners are moved past the door, pushing his and Matt’s row further up. The roars grow louder and they’re chanting. Shiro can’t breathe.

It takes less than a minute, or at least it feels like it when the doors open again and out comes a pile of flesh, floppy and moist and raw, colored in distinct brights and pales, carting past them. The smell finally does push him to vomit, buckling his knees and bending him nearly ninety degrees to empty himself on the floor.

Matt tries to calm him, a weird turn of events that has Shiro reeling, hushing him softly and rubbing his shoulder against his. He steps over puddle when his row is moved up further, like amateur soldiers.

They’re in the front in a matter of moments, Shiro’s body finally stilling. Matt is continuing to tremble beside him, fear evident in his eyes, snot running down his nose but he’s seemed to have given up on wiping it away. The guards waste no time, reaching up to remove their row’s restraints. Shiro’s hands fall numb at his sides, lifeless and useless and cold. He can’t even twitch his fingers, does his best to ignore the pins and needles that jab desperately at his hands, almost to remind him that he’s still  _ alive _ . He feels like he’s forgetting himself.

The prisoners are guided into another hallway through the door, this time more narrow, lined up in single file. Shiro almost feels like he’s back at the Garrison, that this was just another training drill.  Matt is before him, extremities shivering, the brown hair on the back of his neck sticking to his skin with sweat. Shiro reaches up, lets his fingers dance at the nape and watches Matt panic before his shoulders relax. His hair is wet between fingertips but soft, the occasional small pebble from their cell digs into his nail. He feels real under Shiro’s touch, Shiro wants to remember it.

The moment they’re ripped apart is when Shiro thinks that maybe there is nothing he can do and they’re going to all die like dogs.

Matt is pushed to the front and adrenaline pumps through him, causing him to push his way past other prisoners and shouting. The boy is nearly crying now, the guard’s expression disinterested as they hand him a small weapon, almost like a crowbar, flimsy and thin. Shiro watches the slow realization burn onto his face, the weapon becomes heavy in his hands, Matt’s mouth falls agape.

“N-No!” He’s panicking, and Shiro is shoving his way to the front. “I can’t!” 

The guard seems to understand, lifts up his own weapon as if to push Matt forward nonetheless, almost excited with his reluctance. 

No one sees Shiro coming, especially Matt.

The blow makes his hands numb, the delicate feeling of Matt’s skin, cool with sweat but still hot to touch as he knocks him to the ground. Matt looks up at him eyes wide with fear and betrayal but Shiro refuses to think about it. Rather, he reaches down to rip the crowbar from unsteady hands, cold metal against the fire under his bones. His grip is sure and tight.

“Take me!” He’s shouting and his voice doesn’t sound like him.  He feels violent, nearly wicked off the dim lighting. 

The guard laughs and laughs and something sick in Shiro’s gut tells him they know what he’s saying, that the guards understand them perfectly and this is all a pleasurable pastime.  They move him forward, rough hands pushing him through the open gates. 

The light is just as blaring as the last time, loud and seering. They put him in an arena, Shiro recognizes by the screaming stands.  The metal in his arm grows to be a part of him as he grasps it tightly. He glances to the other end of the stage and a titan stands before him, firm on top of a body so still that Shiro thinks he’s imagining it.

He takes a beating, feels he survives longer than the carted flesh he saw prior to entering. His nose breaks and he thinks he’s ripped out the majority of his fingernails from tearing into skin at any close opportunity he’s gotten with his opponent. But Shiro is smarter, faster and more atuned to his body, it seems. He breaks free from the corner, turns the tide and in moments, the beast lays solid on the ground.

Shiro’s chest is heaving when he looks down at the body under him, big and monstrous but small and fragile beneath his feet.  He brings the crowbar down once against the titan’s head, hears a small groan and wraps two hands around the grip.  He brings the metal down again, twice, thrice, four times until there’s a large satisfying crunch, punctuated by the smell of something foul and a growing wetness at his soles.

The crowd is silent, and Shiro feels all eyes burning into him as he breathes out, heavy and tired.  

He screams.

The crowd goes wild.

**Author's Note:**

> shiro is pretty scary, i think.  
> ask me about the title, i have a whole list of reasons  
> twitter: @t33thing


End file.
